Adventures in amateur sewing

Tag Archives: A/B test

A/B testing is kind of my thing. I did this a lot at my former job and it’s always exciting to me when I get real results from an idea or theory. I’m a total nerd for data. Back when I was just toying with the idea of making a flannel shirt I had bought two different independent shirt patterns and couldn’t decide which one to use.

I did some initial reading up on both patterns, and made the decision to start with the Sewaholic Granville shirt because the pattern was designed for pear-shaped bodies (like mine). I liked the result, shown in my previous post, but I couldn’t help but wonder how the shirt would look using the other pattern. Well, the only way to know for sure is to test it out.

Hypothesis: The Sewaholic Granville shirt pattern is the better pattern for making a plaid flannel shirt

Now this obviously cannot be a real A/B test since there are a lot of factors in this test that make it imperfect and not scientific. We all know that the first attempt at something has the most learning curve and so some techniques that were new to me when making the Granville shirt, were more familiar when making the Archer shirt. Also the material I used for the Archer shirt was a lot cheaper, in price and quality, so the overall result would be slightly different no matter what. There is no way to hold all conditions equal for this experiment, but I decided to still test out the following parameters:

Ease of pattern directions

Garment details

Overall fit and look

Ease of Pattern Directions

Both patterns have clear directions that could help anyone making their first button-down shirt. The drawings are all well done and precise. I did find it strange that the Grainline pattern didn’t specify which drawing referred to the interfacing cutting layout. There is Continue reading →